Authors: Amin Maalouf
In the evening few stalls stayed open in the Tabriz bazaar, but the streets were alive and men were sitting around talking
at the crossroads, setting up circles of wicker chairs and of
kalyan
pipes whose smoke was gradually displacing the thousand smells of the day. I followed close on Howard’s heels as he turned
from one alley into another without a second glance; from time to time he would stop to greet the parent of one of his students,
and the street urchins everywhere stopped their games and scattered as he passed.
We finally arrived in front of a gate which was almost eaten away by rust. My companion pushed it open and we went through
a small overgrown garden and up to a mud-brick house whose door, after seven raps, opened creaking on to a huge room which
was lit up by a row of storm lamps hung from the ceiling and which a draught of air was swaying ceaselessly. The people present
must have been used to it, but I very quickly felt as if I was on board a flimsy raft. I could no longer focus on anyone’s
face and felt the need to lie down as soon as possible and close my eyes for a few moments. Baskerville was not unknown at
the ‘sons of Adam’ meeting – he caused quite a stir when he walked in and as I had accompanied him I also had the right to
some fraternal embraces which were duly redoubled when Howard revealed that his arrival in Persia was partly due to me.
When I thought it was time for me to sit down against a wall, a large man stood up at the end of the room. He had a long white
cape draped over his shoulders which set him apart from the others as the most eminent person in the meeting. He took a step
toward me:
‘Benjamin!’
I stood up again, took two steps and rubbed my eyes. ‘Fazel!’ We fell into each other’s arms with an oath of surprise.
‘Mr Lesage was a friend of Sayyid Jamaladin!’
Immediately I stopped being a distinguished visitor and became an historic monument, or even a religious relic. People came
up to me with awe, which was quite embarrassing.
I presented Howard to Fazel. They knew each other only by reputation. Fazel had not been to Tabriz for more than a year, even
though it was his birthplace. Moreover, there was something unusual and unsettling about the whole evening, together with
Fazel being there within those flaking walls and under those dancing lights. Was he not one of the leaders of the democratic
party in parliament, a pillar of the Constitutional Revolution? Was this the moment for him to be away from the capital? These
were the questions which I put to him. He appeared embarrassed. However, I had spoken quietly in French. He looked furtively
at the men next to him, and then by way of an answer he said, ‘Where are you staying?’
‘In the caravansary in the Armenian quarter.’
‘I shall come to see you during the night.’
Toward midnight we met again, six of us, in my room. There were Baskerville, myself, Fazel and three of his companions whom
he introduced hurriedly for reasons of secrecy, only by their first names.
‘You asked at the
anjuman
why I was here and not in Teheran. Well, it is because the capital is already lost as far as the constitution goes. I could
not state it in these terms to thirty people, I would have caused panic. But that is the truth.’
We were all too stunned to react. He explained:
‘Two weeks ago a journalist from St Petersberg came to see me. He was the correspondent of
Ryesh.
His name is Panoff but he writes under the pseudonym “Tané”.’
I had heard about him and his articles were often quoted in the London press.
‘He is a social democrat,’ Fazel continued, ‘and an enemy of Tsarism but when he arrived in Teheran some months ago he managed
to hide his beliefs, worked his way into the Russian legation, and by some chance or other or even by some plan, he managed
to lay his hands on some compromising documents including a project for a coup d’état which the Cossacks would carry out in
order to re-impose an absolute monarchy. It was all written down in black and white. The underworld was to be given free rein
in the bazaar in order to sap the merchants’ confidence in the new regime, and some religious chiefs were to address petitions
to the Shah asking him to invalidate the constitution by reason of its being against Islam. Naturally Panoff was taking a
risk in bringing me those documents. I thanked him for them and immediately asked for an extraordinary meeting of Parliament.
Having exposed the facts in detail, I demanded that the Shah be dismissed and replaced by one of his young sons, that the
Cossack brigade be broken up and the clerics incriminated in the documents be arrested. Several speakers came up to the dais
to express their indignation and to support my proposals.
‘Suddenly an usher came to inform us that the ministers plenipotentiary of Russia and England were in the building and that
they had an urgent note to convey to us. The session was suspended and the president of the
Majlis
and the Prime Minister went out; when they returned they looked like death. The diplomats had come to warn them that if the
Shah were deposed, the two Powers would consider themselves regrettably obliged to intervene militarily. Not only were they
getting ready to strangle us, but we were being forbidden to defend ourselves!’
‘Why such resolve?’ Baskerville asked, appalled.
‘The Tsar does not want a democracy within his borders. The very word parliament makes him tremble with rage.’
‘But even so, that is not the case with Britain!’
‘No. Except that if the Persians managed to govern themselves in an adult manner, that could give ideas to the Indians! And
England would then just have to pack its bags. Then there is oil. In 1901 a British subject, Mr Knox d’Arcy obtained for the
sum of twenty thousand pounds sterling the right to exploit oil reserves throughout the Persian empire. So far production
has been insignificant, but a few months ago immense reserves were found in the Bakhtiari tribal areas, doubtless you have
heard talk of this already. These reserves could represent an important source of revenue for the country. I therefore asked
parliament to revise the agreement with London so that we might obtain more equitable conditions. Most of the deputies agreed
with me. Since then the English minister has no longer invited me to the legation.’
‘But it is in the legation’s gardens that the
bast
is taking place,’ I said pensively.
‘The English consider that Russian influence is currently too great, and that Russia is only leaving them the congruent portion
of the Persian cake, so they encouraged us to protest and opened their gardens to us. It is even said that they were the ones
who printed the photograph which compromised Monsieur Naus. When our movement triumphed, London managed to obtain an agreement
from the Tsar to share the country. The north of Persia would be the Russian zone of influence and the south would be the
private property of England. Once the British got what they wanted, our democracy suddenly ceased to interest them. Like the
Tsar they can only see it as an inconvenience and would prefer to see it disappear.’
‘By what right!’ Baskerville exploded.
Fazel gave him a paternal smile before carrying on with his account:
‘After the visit of the two diplomats, the deputies were disheartened. They were unable to confront so many enemies at the
same time and could do no better than to lay the blame on the unfortunate Panoff. Several speakers accused him of being a
forger and an anarchist whose sole aim was to provoke a war between Persia and Russia. The journalist had come with me to
parliament and I had left him in an office near the door to the great hall so that he could
give his testimony should it be necessary. Now the deputies were asking for him to be arrested and delivered to the Tsar’s
legation and a motion had been put forward to that effect.
‘This man who had helped us against his own government was going to be handed over to the executioners! I who am so calm by
nature, could no longer hold myself back. I jumped up on to a chair and shouted like one possessed: “I swear, by the soil
which covers my father, that if this man is arrested I will call the ‘sons of Adam’ to arms and set this parliament awash
in blood. No one who votes for this motion will leave here alive!” They could have lifted my immunity and arrested me too,
but they did not dare. They suspended the session until the next day. That very night I left the capital for my birthplace,
where I arrived today. Panoff came with me and is now hiding somewhere in Tabriz while waiting to leave the country.’
We talked and talked and soon dawn surprised us. The first calls to prayer sounded and the light became brighter. We debated
and constructed a thousand gloomy futures and then debated again, too exhausted to stop. Baskerville stretched out, stopped
in full flight, consulted his watch and stood up again like a sleep-walker and gave his neck a thorough scratch:
‘My God, it’s already six o’clock, a night with no sleep, how can I face my pupils? And what will the Reverend say seeing
me come back at this hour?’
‘You can always pretend that you spent the night with a woman!’
Howard, however, was no longer in the mood to smile.
I do not want to speak of coincidence, since chance did not play a large role in the affair, but I am duty bound to point
out that, just as Fazel finished his description of the plot being hatched against the young Persian democracy based on the
documents which had been spirited away by Panoff, the coup d’état had already begun.
In fact, as I later learnt, it was toward four o’clock in the morning of that Wednesday, 23 June 1908, that a contingent of
one thousand Cossacks, commanded by Colonel Liakhov, set off toward the Baharistan,
the seat of the parliament, in the heart of Teheran. The building was surrounded and its exits under guard. Members of a local
anjuman
, who had noticed the troop movements, ran over to a neighbouring college, where a telephone had recently been installed, in
order to call some deputies and certain religious democrats such as Ayatollah Behbahani and Ayatollah Tabatabai. They all
came there before dawn to indicate by their presence their attachment to the constitution. Curiously the Cossacks let them
through. Their orders had been to prevent anyone leaving, not entering.
The crowd of protesters kept swelling and at day-break there were several hundreds of them, including numerous ‘sons of Adam’.
They had rifles, but not much ammunition – about sixty cartridges each, certainly not enough to enable them to withstand a
siege. Moreover they were hesitant about using their arms and ammunition. They effectively took up position on roof-tops and
behind windows but they did not know whether they should fire the first shots, thereby giving the signal for an inevitable
massacre, or whether they should wait passively while the preparations for the coup were carried out.
It was precisely that which delayed the Cossack’s assault even longer. Liakhov, surrounded by Russian and Persian officers,
was busy stationing his troops as well as his cannons, of which six were counted that day, the most lethal one being installed
on Topkhaneh Square. On several occasions the Colonel rode within the defenders’ line of sight, but the personalities present
prevented the ‘sons of Adam’ from opening fire lest the Tsar use such an incident as a pretext for invading Persia.
It was toward the middle of the afternoon that the order to attack was given. Although the sides were unequal, the fighting
raged for six or seven hours. By a series of bold strokes, the resisters managed to put three cannons out of action.
However this was the heroism of despair. By nightfall the white flag of defeat was raised over the first parliament in Persian
history, but several minutes after the last shot Liakhov ordered his artillery to fire again. The Tsar’s directives were clear;
it was not enough to abolish the parliament, they also had orders to destroy the building
which had accommodated it, so the inhabitants of Teheran would see its ruins and it would be forever a lesson to all.
Fighting had not yet come to an end in the capital when the first shooting broke out in Tabriz. I had gone to collect Howard
as he came out of class and we were to meet Fazel at the
anjuman
to go and have dinner with one of his relatives. We had not yet stepped into the labyrinth of the bazaar when we heard shots
which sounded as if they came from near by.
With a curiosity marked by recklessness, we headed down toward the source of the noise only to see, at about a hundred metres
distance, a vociferous crowd marching forward. There was dust, smoke, a forest of clubs, rifles and glowing torches as well
as shouts which I could not understand as they were in Azeri, the Turkish language of the people of Tabriz. Baskerville did
his best to translate: ‘Death to the constitution’, ‘Death to parliament’, ‘Death to atheists’, ‘Long live the Shah’. Dozens
of townspeople were running about in all directions. An old man was dragging a stupefied goat at the end of a rope. A woman
stumbled and her son, hardly six years old, helped her to get up and supported her as she fled limping with him.
We ourselves hurried towards our meeting place. On the way a group of young men were erecting a barricade made of two tree
trunks upon which they were piling up in completely random fashion tables, bricks, chairs, boxes and barrels. We were recognized
and allowed to pass, but we were advised to go quickly with the words ‘they are coming here’, ‘they want to burn down the
quarter’, ‘they have sworn to massacre the sons of Adam.’
In the
anjuman
building Fazel was surrounded by forty or fifty men and he was the only one not carrying a rifle. He only had an Austrian
Mannlicher pistol whose sole use was to point out to all around him the positions they should take up. He was calm, less anxious
than the evening before, in the state of calm which a man of action feels when the unbearable waiting is over.